By Moses Nampala
Solomon Mwiru, a smallholder paddy rice farmer, Idudi, Nansanga sub-county in Budaka district has this season got a good harvest. He is grateful to the almighty God for providing good weather.
At the beginning of the month of September, he rolled out paddy rice enterprise on a four-acre field.
“For the first time in so many years, I am harvesting 20 sacks of unprocessed rice from each acre,” he says with excitement.
“However, the rains experienced in October and November were affecting the drying of the sacks of raw paddy rice stack, inside the house. The living room of his modest semi-permanent house, now serving as storage for the 80 sacks of his raw produce, brews with heat.
“Each day that goes by without drying the sacks of the raw produce, turns the grain of rice in the husk from white to yellowish,” he says.
President Yoweri Museveni has, for years, implored smallholder farmers to drop the tendency of growing crops for merely food security, but to double their efforts to grow enough with surplus that at the end of the day could be sold to fetch a household some money.
Slowly and steadily the president’s message has resonated well among the smallholder farmers in Budaka. With the input of agro volunteer experts, the farmers now have remarkable increase in household food crop production.
Kano Kanani, the chairperson Idudi small holder farmer rice scheme cooperative, Nansanga sub-county in Budaka district regrettably observes that increased volume of rice production, dictates that the farmer shifts from primitive to modern methods of harvest and post-harvest-handling.
Small holder farmers that have taken the advice of the president seriously, this season, are not only overwhelmed with enormity of production but also considerably strained in executing harvest and post-harvest handling activities in a dare setting.
The primitive methods of harvest and post-harvest-handling hardly match the volume of harvest.
Primitive harvest model
Under the primitive harvest model, after stalks of raw rice grains have been harvested from the field, a farmer is obliged to hire labourers to come and manually pound away piles of rice stalks using big sticks in a bid to obtain crisps of raw unprocessed rice.
Because harvest usually comes almost at the same time, getting labourers to manually thresh the crop to obtain husked rice. Matters have been worsened with the persistent rains experienced almost regularly.
“By the time the labour is obtained, the piles of the harvested stalks of rice have started to get bad, hence compromising quality of the final product,” says the chairperson.
“Left with no options, most farmers now in Idudi, are selling raw unprocessed rice, cheaply, as low as sh1,400 a kilo to dealers now scuttling around with trucks,” he adds.
The chairperson says among intervention sthe cooperative requires from government, is providing farmer community with communal motorised rice threshers, screen house, and storage facilities, or else the small holder farmer resigns to the fate of continuing to be cheated dealers, hence forgetting about prosperity.
Idudi small holder rice scheme farmer cooperative boasts of 1,200 members.
Good harvest
The farmers now specialising in growing an aromatic variety of rice (SUPER) grown on a sprawling field 200 acres, have a record of churning 500 metric tonnes a season.
Farida Namaja, the secretary of the cooperative, says averagely individual smallholder farmer members roll out paddy rice on fields ranging from between two and twenty acres.
Member paddy rice farmers are now knowledgeable on the necessary agronomic practices arising from years of sensitisation by volunteer agro partners, notably Grain Council in liaison with African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership.
“Skill empowerment given to us by these voluntary partners in the last five years has gradually but steadily enabled the cooperative members to scale up production to averagely 500 metric tonnes a season from a paltry 25 metric tonnes previously,” she explains.
Although the executive of the cooperative has been negotiating for a decent price for the farmers’ bulk produce, with potential buyers, lack of simple-modern-value-additional devices such as motorised rice huller, motorised threshers, expansive drying and storage facilities and modern rice mill, remain a thorn in the foot of cooperative.
Apparently they can only afford to bargain for sh3000 for a kilogramme of unprocessed aromatic rice. The current market price of aromatic rice goes for between sh5,500 to sh6,000.
“Selling a kilo of unprocessed aromatic rice at sh3,000 to dealers is in its entirety cheating us. If only government could come to the aid of the cooperative in terms of providing us a kit of necessary value addition devices, communal drying and storage facilities,” she says.
Bank support
She observes that the cooperative has for a long time considered the idea of getting credit from the bank.
However, formal collateral has remained a barrier, for the cooperative still in its formative stage.
“If Government could accept guaranteeing the cooperative to get what we urgently need going by numbers of the cooperative we have the capacity of paying back the loan,” she observes.
Nasur Mayuga, the cooperative treasurer, says the cooperative has a paltry bank balance of only sh15m that is collected from members subscription.
“We keep on ploughing back the member subscription into the farmer community members at a modest interest when they seek credit to obtain agro input,” he observes.
A cross-section of small farmer community, of the cooperative members that spoke to the New Vision observed that challenges aside, all is not lost.
Mohamood Matege, 45, says although the farm gate price of unprocessed remains, individual active cooperative members are able to get proceeds from their produce instantly.
“My life and family has evolved from a semi-permanent to a five-bed room house,” says Matege who grows paddy rice on a six-acre piece of land.
Increased production, better post harvesting needed
However, with production now increasing, it hardly matches with the primitive harvest and post-harvest handling activities. This explains why government has to come to their help, providing them with communal drying and storage facilities, and simple kit of communal value addition machinery, including modern mill, if they could overcome getting cheated by dealers and prosper.
According to stakeholders in the grains sector, among the immediate intervention government through Ministry of Agriculture ought to focus on now, is providing farmers with communal devices such as threshers, tarpaulins, communal drying slubs, storage facility infrastructure, if quality of the produce has to be realised.
Joel Kakaire, the country director, African Fertiliser and Agriculture Partnership a nonprofit entity says adapting modern agronomical practices among other usage of fertiliser has excited farmer community.
“In the beginning a paddy rice farmer harvested only 3-4 bags of unprocessed paddy rice bags from an acre of land. However, increased usage of fertiliser, with now fertiliser supplier agents brought closer to the farmer, their average yields have scaled up to 20 sacks from a paltry four bags.
“The yield may appear not good enough but many farmers are getting adept and ambitious by the day. Once they’ve mastered application of agronomical practices they shall hit the ideal yield of 36 bags of unprocessed paddy rice reaped from an acre,” observes Kakaire.
